i thought a simple charger wouldn’t affect my life as much as it has… this isn’t about my mobile’s charger or my laptop’s charger, those are two chargers ppl are normally dependent on (yes, i hear some of you say ‘you are too’!), i’d like to believe i am not that mobile / computer dependent today as i was say a couple of years ago… i am not nomophobic anymore… plus, well… i could just borrow A’s charger or use his laptop… !!

so, this is story of my camera charger, and how it conking off is affecting me more than i imagined. what’s a month with a camera right? do i really have that much i want to keep clicking at? (and it is NO CAMERA, as my phone’s camera conked off a long time back and its anyway a blackberry, so one can’t even call that camera a camera…) the charger went kaput due to a power or voltage fluctuation couple of months ago. canon refused to repair it, said i had to buy a new one, and with my typical indian brain (or is it south indian brain?)… i wanted to save some wasteful money & not be so wasteful in terms of material either (environment et all).

scrounged around, found a local mechanic at alfa (juhu) who claims to be able to fix anything! he fixed the fuse. battery fully charged, life was back on track for a month… i needed to charge it again in the middle of a trip to the kumaon himalayas in december. but ‘phat’, this time the fuse blew or something happened and it wouldn’t charge anymore… i had some bars left, the trip was coming to an end, so packed it all up, downloaded the pictures onto my comp and put the camera into my cupboard…

back in the grime, put on our home-owner hats and got busy with the interiors of our new space… no travel plans on the horizon (given that we were shifting homes in march) i chose to push this task into the forgetful depths on my head… but i had decided to buy a new charger, so whenever i was around a canon store would ask… then the first ‘event’ took place… we were shifting homes.. this wasn’t just any shift… it was from rental to our own place (while the bank owns most of it, we still own 20% :D)  and that was when i realised the battery was drained, zero, caput, nada… i couldn’t take any photos… and it hurt. i wanted to have memories of that day…

fueled by utter disappointment as i was now dependent on my never-that-strong-memory, the mad hunt for a charger began with zest, vigour and commitment. multiple calls later (no one seemed to have it in stock, do i have such an out-dated model?), having mugged up the little letter LP-E5E, finally some luck. one store promised to get it for me in a couple of days, but with Holi bang in the middle, i would need to wait till thursday. twiddled my fingers till the day he was to call, he didn’t. so i called but no, he didn’t have it.

on friday, driven by a need to escape mumbai, and we took off to pune.

and the second ‘needs-t0-be-recorded’ event took place. TAG – my friend’s 1 and a half year old… we hung out with him, took him to the park, watched him run ‘up up up and down down down’ on tiny slopes of grass… watched him attempt to climb a ladder for the first time…. but i have no pictures….of any of this… of his cautious smiles, his artificial-scrunched-up-eyes-HA-HA-HA-laugh, of his frowns-with-lips-pursed-together, of his hugging me (the first time he’s done that, and i got a total of 7 over the weekend) or his patting the hollow at my neck in a reassuring and rather adult way…

back in mumbai, lower levels of despondency ensured even more vigour in the multiple calls this morning… but no sign of that elusive charger…sheer desperation and a call went to the canon head office (still waiting for them to ‘call back’), to chennai to check if a canon distributor can somehow get me a charger.

then, i am finally listening to them… digesting the words… ‘the company is out of stock, it should be available in the market in a month’….

the sentence: a MONTH MORE of NO CAMERA

should i buy a new phone with a better camera? but i don’t need one… maybe just borrow a charger? that seems more sensible right? LP-E5E? anyone out there? SOS.